When purchasing a home a prospective buyer will usually visit several different homes for sale, each with different asking prices and different features. A buyer in general wants the best value for money within a predetermined price range. Often, it becomes difficult to make a fair comparison to determine which home represents the best value for money based on the multitude of features associated with a home. One will usually end up with a disorganized pile of feature sheets with handwritten notes in various different places. In some cases, a must-have feature which the buyer requires may be forgotten if all the bits of paper become too disorganized. For example, in the rush of a busy market, or overwhelmed by the number of issues to be dealt with, one may forget, for example, that the home to be purchased should be within a short walk from a bus stop. It is also a pretty slow exercise to compare notes made in different formats. Furthermore, if the buyer's preferences change during the home buying process, then it becomes a time consuming process to manually compare and re-evaluate all the past notes.
Buyers may also be provided with recently completed, comparable home sales by real estate agents, which may be a selective list based on criteria such as the number of bedrooms, age and square footage. The general condition of maintenance and repair will generally not be one of the parameters. The selection of recently sold homes depends on the judgment of the real estate agent, and this choice may vary from agent to agent. Buyers are generally provided with a list of homes, usually on printed sheets, with no easy way to manipulate the information pertaining to the homes. Any comparison other than a general one is a paper exercise. Sometimes a home buyer will use a scorecard in the form of a table with homes across the top and features down the side. A sided by side comparison of homes is then possible.
The Internet can presently be used to help buyers. The ZipRealty website uses an electronic version of the side by side home comparison tool. The features of up to four homes can be compared side by side, on screen, but without any analysis.
The Trulia website lists homes for sale in a table format, and permits the homes to be listed in order of any of the features. There is also a rank associated with each home on the list, the rank indicating the neighborhood popularity of the home to which it refers, or the popularity with which the home is searched online.
The Internet can help buyers to value homes they are considering buying. For example, the Zillow website provides price estimates based on previous sales of similar homes in the same area. The estimate is drawn from a database of sales information, but the estimate generally does not take into account the condition of the homes, unless extra information is added. The accuracy claimed on this website is that most estimates are within 10% of the true market value, which means that on a $500,000 home, the estimate could be out by as much as $50,000. The notion of a true market value is an approximation anyway, because the desperation of a seller, the eagerness of a buyer or the strength of a good negotiator each may affect the ultimate selling price to the same amount. One drawback in estimating values this way is that the estimate is based on historical data, which may not bear much resemblance to current market data. This is the case particularly in a fast moving market or if the homes used for providing comparable values are too dissimilar from the one being considered for purchase.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,174 discloses a system for comparing a subject home for sale with homes that have recently been sold. The system allows sold homes, which are not similar to the subject home, to be used for the comparison, by first adjusting the sale prices of the sold homes to compensate for their differences. This would allow, for example, a four bedroom home to be used as a comparable for a three bedroom home.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,178,406 discloses a system for comparing a subject home for sale with homes that have recently been sold. The system allows sold homes, which are not similar to the subject home, to be used for the comparison, by first adjusting the sale prices of the sold homes to compensate for their differences. The system then selects the best matched recently sold homes to use as the comparables.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,141,621 is a system for comparing the value of a home for sale with recently sold homes based on a calculation involving the assessed taxation value of the homes.
US Patent Application Publication 2004/0254803 discloses a system for comparing different appraisals of the same subject home. Each of the appraisals is carried out using a different methodology, usually leading to a range of different appraised values for the same home for sale.
US Patent Application Publication 2005/0216292 is a system which can compensate for appraiser bias in the appraised value of a home for sale.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,115,694 is a computer implemented system of comparing a home for sale with comparable recently sold homes.
US Patent Application Publication 2003/0101074 discloses a tool for evaluating a real estate location taking into account social and environmental factors.
US Patent Application Publication 2006/0089842 discloses a system which can compare multiple subject homes for sale with recently sold homes. A different set of comparable sold homes is used for each subject home for sale. The system indicates which homes for sale are under priced and which are overpriced. Again, the comparisons are based on historic rather than current data.
There is no automated system in existence known to the inventor which facilitates and speeds up the task of comparison of homes for sale with each other during the home purchasing process, and which is flexible enough to be tailored to each individual home buyer's needs and preferences. While systems exist for the comparison of a home for sale with homes that have been recently sold, there is no system in place for the comparison of several homes for sale with each other.
There is a need for a convenient method for a home buyer to compare the homes under consideration for purchase, which is faster than manually comparing feature sheets. Further, there is a need to provide a more accurate analysis of a home's value, which is specific to each prospective purchaser. The aim of the current invention is to provide market value comparisons, which are more representative of current market demand rather than on what the market has to offer. The price valuations and comparisons are therefore based more on the wants, needs and assessments of prospective buyers rather than on the numerical values of the physical features and parameters of the homes offered for sale. The comparisons are not based on historical sales data, but instead are based on current market data.